Capital One launches Vauxhall Rewards credit card

Using a credit card to pay for some or all of the cost of a vehicle isn't uncommon. But a new credit card partnership between Capital One and Vauxhall offers the chance to earn money off the cost of a new car or van via a rewards credit card.

The Rewards Points you can earn from the Vauxhall Rewards credit card could shave up to £1,500 off the purchase of a new Vauxhall, depending on the model you go for.

I should say upfront you'll need to be aged 21 or over, have an excellent credit history and earn at least £20,000 a year to be considered for the card.

How the Rewards scheme works
Each Rewards Point you earn is worth £1 off the cost of a new Vauxhall vehicle. And like many reward and cashback credit cards at the moment, the Vauxhall Rewards card offers a higher initial rate of rewards.

In this instance, you can initially earn Reward Points worth 6% of the value of your spending. This is capped at either £3,000-worth of spending or the end of your first three months of having the card, depending on whichever point is reached first.

So you can earn a maximum of 180 Reward Points before the rewards value then switches to 3% of the value of your purchases.

To earn the maximum £1,500 discount, you would then need to spend £44,000 (or around £1,000 a month) on your card before the end of your fourth year.

Depending on how much you spend on food, entertainment and holidays each month, that figure isn't entirely unrealistic.

Whether you want to use all that spending to pay for a new Vauxhall is another matter.

The card also offers membership of the Vauxhall MasterFit Service Club and no interest to pay on purchases for the first six months you have the card.

If you don't pay off your balance in full each month, the card has a representative APR of 17.9%. Of course, paying interest will soon wipe out the value of the rewards points you've earned.

Pros and cons
Of course, if you're not a fan of Vauxhall vehicles there's absolutely no point getting this card, and I'm surprised you've read this far.

Even if you are very keen on them, there are several things to be aware of.

The amount of Rewards Points you can spend is capped depending on the model from 500 on the ADAM and Agila to the maximum 1,500 on the Ampera and Insignia.

Here's a complete breakdown of those caps.

Model

Maximum number of Rewards Points that can be redeemed

ADAM, Agila

500 Rewards Points=£500

Corsa, Antara, all Vauxhall Commercial Vehicles

1,000 Rewards Points=£1,000

Astra, Astra GTC, Cascada, Meriva, Mokka, Zafira, Zafira Tourer

1,250 Rewards Points=£1,250

Ampera, Insignia

1,500 Rewards Points=£1,500

With a new ADAM retailing at around £10,000, £500 is only a small dent in the price.

And you can only buy a car from a participating Vauxhall retailer.

If you're a pretty big spender and love the idea of a new Vauxhall then this card might be appealing due to its fairly generous rewards points. But bear in mind that using the Rewards Points might limit your ability to haggle any further discount off the car.

Cashback card alternatives
If you want to earn cold, hard cash and have a choice of cars, then there are several decent cashback credit cards out there.

What's more, there's a flat cashback rate of 1.25% on all of your spending after that, irrespective of how much you spend. Each year you have the card, in your anniversary month the cashback rate doubles to 2.5%. However you do need to spend £10,000 in the previous year to qualify for this special 'anniversary' rate.

There's also a £25 annual fee to take into account. This card has a representative APR of 18.7%.

For the first three months you have the Barclaycard High 5 Cashback card it pays a cracking 6% introductory rate on your top five purchases giving you the chance to earn up to £120.

After that, you'll get 2% cashback on your five biggest purchases each month, and 0.5% on everything else. That's as long as you make at least 15 purchases each month. Plus the rate will double to 4% for one month each year to mark your anniversary with the card, although again only on your top five purchases. Note that it has an annual fee of £24. It has a representative APR of 24.8%.

After that you enjoy a tiered rate of interest depending on how much you spend. Spend up to £3,500 over the next nine months and you earn 0.5% cashback, spend up to £7,500 and you get 1% cashback, while spending above £7,500 will bag you 1.25%. the APR is 19.9%.

10 things we hate about our banks

More than 46,000 of 106,000 the complaints received by the FOS in the second half of last year related to payment protection insurance (PPI). And the organisation is expecting to receive a record 165,000 PPI complaints in 2012/2013.

The huge numbers are due to the PPI mis-selling scandal that should now be a thing of the past, but there is no doubt that the insurance, which can add thousands to the cost of a loan, is highly unpopular!

Complaints about mortgages jumped by 38% in the last six months of last year, the FOS figures show, compared to an increase of just 5% in investment-related complaints.

Common gripes about mortgages include the exit penalties imposed should you want to sell up or change you mortgage before a fixed or discounted deal comes to an end, and the high arrangement fees charged by many lenders.

While there is nothing in the data released by the FOS about the number of complaints relating to savings accounts, hard-pressed savers have been struggling with low interest rates for several years now.

You can get up to 3.10% with Santander's easy-access eSaver account, but many older accounts are paying 1.00% or less and even this market-leading offer includes a 12-month bonus of 2.60% - meaning that the rate will plummet to just 0.50% after the first year.

If you need to send money abroad, the likelihood is that your bank will impose transfer charges - and offer you a poor rate of exchange. Someone transferring a five-figure sum could easily lose out by £500 or more as a result.

The good news, however, is that you can often get a better deal by using a currency specialist such as Moneycorp.

Automated telephone banking systems, not to mention call centres in far-flung parts of the world, are one of our top gripes - especially as we often encounter them when we are already calling to report a problem.

In the words of one disgruntled customer: "What is it about telephone banking that turns me into Victor Meldrew? Well, maybe it's the fourteen security questions, maybe it's the range of products that they try to push or maybe it's because I'm forced to listen to jazz funk at full volume while my phone bill soars.

"Actually though, I think it's because the people I eventually speak to rarely seem able to solve the issue I'm calling about."

The days of a personal relationship with your bank manager are long gone - for the huge majority of us at least.

When ethical Triodos Bank investigated recently why around 9 million Britons would not recommend their banks to a friend or relative, it found that almost a third felt they were not treated as individuals. Another 40%, meanwhile, were simply disappointed with the customer service they received.

The Triodos Bank research also indicated that the bonus culture that ensured the bank's high-flying employees received large salaries, even when it was making a loss at the taxpayer's expense, was hugely unpopular with consumers.

About a quarter of those who would not recommend their current banks said this was the main reason why. And with RBS executives sharing a £785 million bonus pool despite the bank, which is 82% publicly owned, making a loss of £2 billion last year, it's not hard to see why.